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Applescript – Split activity in completed and remaining sub tasks

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 14. May 2012

When managing a project with Merlin you create your tasks and assign them to your resources. As your resources work on their task, you as a PM update your project by entering the actual values. That means, you enter the percentage of the completed work and the actual start date. If updating the tasks in absolute mode, you can enter the actual work or remaining work and duration.

Next time the resource works on the task, and reports its progress to update the data, you enter the new ‘% complete’ and if updating the tasks in absolute mode, the amount of actual work and remaining work so far.

Some users however would like to be able to pause the works on a task, to plan the remaining work sometime later on. This is also a good idea, if wanting to vary the utilization of a resource on a task in time.  So to do so in Merlin, you would need to create two tasks. One for the first part of the works on the task, and a second for the remaining.

To quicken this procedure, we wrote an applescript sample which requires Merlin 2.8.4, and creates the two sub-activities based on the planned and actual values of the task in progress.

If interested, feel free to download, use or modify as you like.  (more…)

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Applescript – Evernote to Merlin

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 17. April 2012

Merlin project management software integrates easily with lots of other Mac and Windows applications. For some applications you need to export/import files, with others you simply sync from Merlin. If you use Evernote to record your notes and want to transfer them to Merlin, you may now do so, by the use of the following AppleScript sample.

It reacts on the Evernote selection and transfers selected notes to Merlin. Just select the notes you want to transfer in Evernote, call the AppleScript and see the selected notes transferred in the top most opened Merlin project as file elements. Those elements can be then viewed even without connection to the Evernote account or the Evernote app on your Mac and are now part of your project.

Download: Evernote > Merlin AppleScript sample

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Applescript – Merlin’s script folder

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 27. March 2012

When using Merlin to manage and plan your projects on Mac OS X you can enhance its functions by AppleScript. We have posted various AppleScript samples in this blog. Feel free to download, use but also modify any way you think appropriate.

Some notes on this:

  • To place a new AppleScript in Merlin’s script folder just drag your Applescript in the folder Merlin opens over File > Send To > Open Scripts Folder
  • For new scripts to be listed under File > Send To, you need to re-start Merlin.
  • If editing a script located in the scripts folder, you need to re-start Merlin, before your newly saved version of the script is available over the Send To  sub menu.
  • If looking for the path of Merlin’s script folder, by a cmd+click on its title row……you will see it placed under: Your Mac > Your hard disk > Users > Your User Name > Library > Application Support > Merlin > SendToMenu
  • If looking for it over the Finder and checking the contents of your home directory, don’t be surprised not seeing the “Library” folder. This is a feature of Lion, according to which the “Library” folder is an invisible folder.

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Applescript – Access elements

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 3. February 2012

This is a small “how to” showing how to access elements in Merlin projects over Applescript.

If you want to access all elements of a currently opened Merlin project:

tell application "Merlin"
	set proj to root project of document 1
	set myElements to deep elements of proj
	repeat with aObj in myElements
              get aObj
        end repeat
end tell

If you want to access elements of the currently selected activity rows:

tell application "Merlin"
	set myselection to selected object of main window of document 1 as list
	repeat with aObj in myselection
               get element of aObj as list
		--to iterate in them
                repeat with anElement in element of aObj as list
                      display dialog title of aObj & ": " & title of anElement
		end repeat
	end repeat
end tell


elements of… asks for the elements attached on the object itself. While deep elements of… asks also for elements attached in sub objects as well.

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